During construction of buildings, and particularly home and commercial buildings, electrical boxes are used throughout the building to create locations where electrical power can be safely provided at those locations in the building. Metal conduit is typically coupled to these electrical boxes through which the electrical wiring passes. There are numerous sizes and shapes of electrical boxes in existence. There are also numerous building safety codes—codes that vary from city to city—that must be followed by contractors during building construction. All electrical boxes and conduit must comply with these codes otherwise the building will not pass inspection.
A known problem with existing electrical boxes and the rings used with these boxes is that one needs to know the finish thickness of each wall before one can even begin to drywall or apply any wall material. Once the finish thickness is determined, and if the electrical box is recessed too deep within the wall, a ring must be added so that when an electrical outlet, for example, is mounted to the ring the outlet will be nearly flush with the outer surface of the wall. The known rings are sold in several varieties of depths from ½ inch to 2 inches in depth. The deeper rings, however, are very expensive and are not commonly available at most stores. If the wall thickness changes during the construction process, by adding tile, cabinets, wood paneling or other finishing material to the wall, the installed rings need to removed and a replacement ring added. This results in a very expensive and time consuming tear down of the wall surrounding the installed ring so that the incorrect ring can be taken out and the correct one added.
One attempt to solve this problem has included the creation of adjustable rings which permit the adjustment of the ring depth. These adjustable rings, however, are very complicated devices with multiple parts. They are also very costly, and they still need to be installed at each desired location before the drywall or other wall materials can even be installed. For an entire house or commercial building, these adjustable rings are nearly cost prohibitive.
Although attempts have been made to try and overcome the above described problems, including the problems with adjustable rings, there remains a need for a system that is universal, inexpensive, easily installed and removed, and more importantly, can be added to a wall that already has its drywall, tile, cabinets or wood paneling or any other wall material installed, meaning that no teardown of the wall is required. The present invention provides such a solution.